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of Medical Research to include specific sections dealing with the social sciences in health research.
The emergence of the Indian Journal of Medical Ethics gave impetus to discourse on ethics that led
to an interest in the subject among social scientists’ bodies. In the absence of a comprehensive and
universally applicable code or guidelines that are applicable across institutions and types of research,
researchers can only apply institutional guidelines, if they exist, or guidelines developed in other
countries and for different purposes.

What Is Research Ethics?

Generally, most people think of ethics as rules that distinguish between right and wrong. Ethical
codes are also considered moral codes. Most often ethics refers to rules that are a guide to doing the
right thing, although, what the right thing is, remains relative to the context. In consequence, there
are ethical norms to be followed at home, at school, at work or in society or in places of worship, or
for that matter in a public space, and so on. They may also be different for different sets of people who
are viewing the same phenomenon. For instance, abortion may be wrong or right. While there may be
legal frameworks, they may not be the same as ethical frameworks, which are informal and subject to
interpretation in a way that law is not. Ethics may be defined as, “A method, procedure or perspective
for deciding how to act and for analyzing complex problems.” (Resnik, 2015). “As a concept, ‘research
ethics’ refers to a complex set of values, standards and institutional schemes that help constitute and
regulate scientific activity.” (NESH, op. cit.). While the subject of ethics is complex and has in fact
generated volumes of discussion, at the core, ethics rests on human and humane considerations.

Research ethics is grounded in the principles and practice of science. In other words, research ethics
may be defined as “codification of ethics of science in practice”. There can then be no separation of
science and ethics since the latter is embedded in the practice of science. The ultimate responsibility
of scientific research in social sciences is to seek the truth. So, it follows that scientific integrity is a
key component of research ethics. One cannot expect a poor scientific study to be ethically sound.
Inevitably scientific standards or standard operating procedures (SOPs) related to research, influence
the practice of ethical responsibilities in research. The former will include relationship among
researchers, between researchers and institutions, and such acts as dissemination of research and how
it is used.

While a consideration of ethics is an integral part of the structure of research, ethics exists within
a social context and must be considered separately in each context without diluting the content of
the ethical principle. Scientific methods and tools are also under constant development. Not using
the most appropriate conceptual frameworks and methods leads to ethical inadequacy in the study.
This constant questioning of methods and processes is necessary from both a scientific and ethical
standpoint, to quote Yogendra Singh (1973: 27).

Whereas we do not have to become cynical towards the internationally accepted norms of scientific
objectivity, theoretical generalization, measurement and prediction in the social sciences, we do
have to closely examine the value-presuppositions of each social science paradigm which we use
on our own or because of inspiration from abroad. It is these value-presuppositions underlying the
hypotheses and definition of the problems of social research which delimit the relevance of social
science research.
An ethically sound social science research must examine and reexamine the concepts, paradigms and
methodologies to ensure its appropriateness and adequacy to studying the problem before applying
them in the study. This is integral to ethically-sound research.

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